In the interest of economic efficiency, I have a proposal regarding this. Simply put:
(1) There is an economic cost to renaming roads. (2) To minimize costs, it is best to avoid renaming roads too many times. (3) The easiest thing to do is to rename roads to something non-controversial (e.g. "Red road', "Green road', ... et cetera -or- "112th St NE", "113th St NE" and so on), and leave it that way. I made a post on my Facebook group regarding this. Let me dig it up. - James P.S. It gives me great pleasure to talk about bringing greater economic efficiency to the Land of the Buddha. On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 7:46 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <sur...@hserus.net> wrote: > On 10-Sep-2015, at 8:03 AM, James Bonilla <callmejb...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > There is much to be said for leaving historical names alone. But there is > > much precedent for renaming roads (but not countries) named after a > > "favcorite bad guy". Agree? Disagree? Comments? > > Having seen various renames of roads here in Chennai, south India, and > other renames of cities (bombay to mumbai, formally - or the local / > informal / most likely racist abbreviation of “ahmednagar” in maharashtra > to just “nagar” or insisting on pronouncing “ahmedabad” in gujarat as > “amdavad”) - my reaction is to simply continue calling the city by its old > name. > > Calling a road by its old name is just fine, and a best common practice - > no cabbie or auto driver or anybody else is going to recognise what you > mean when you say APJ Abdul Kalam Road instead of Aurangzeb Road, or, to > pick an example much closer to me, “Ramachandra Adithanar Road” instead of > Gandhinagar 4th Main Road (which is surrounded by other Gandhinagar Nth > main roads all of which retain their old names). > > There are still areas of Chennai known by the names of long demolished > landmarks - such as asking people to meet you “near the Eros Theater” - > which has been replaced by a mitsubishi dealership for almost two decades > now. > > —srs >
